Centro Familia defends its spending of taxpayer money

An FBI agent paid a mysterious visit to a Wheaton bilingual daycare last week that is under investigation by several county departments for the potential misuse of thousands of dollars of public funds.

The reason the agent visited Centro Familia, a nonprofit that trains teachers and provides preschool and receives $488,000 in public funds each fiscal year, remains unclear.

The agent visited the daycare last week with an employee of the county's Office of the Inspector General, said Pilar Torres, the executive director of Centro Familia, in an e-mail to The Gazette. Torres said the FBI agent did not present a subpoena nor demand any information and asked to speak with one of the daycare's contractors, who is a part-time bookkeeper for Centro Familia.

"After discovering the contractor was not at the office, they immediately left without further questions," Torres said. She added that the daycare's attorney later learned that the FBI agent came with "a very preliminary inquiry at the request of a county official."

"To our knowledge, they are not conducting an official investigation," Torres said.

FBI Spokesman Richard Wolf declined to comment on the visit, saying the FBI usually does not comment on possible or ongoing cases. The county has no direct knowledge of the FBI visit, said Patrick Lacefield, a spokesman for the Office of the County Executive.

In January, the county Inspector General's Office announced it was scrutinizing how Centro Familia management spent more than $900,000 of public funds over a two-year period. The county's Department of Health and Human Services doles out the funds each fiscal year, said the department's spokeswoman Mary Anderson.

But Torres maintains the daycare has used its funds consistently with county policy and that only about $61,000 is missing from invoice records.

"We believe this latest news is nothing more than a political attempt to discredit and destroy our organization, which will result in loss of services to a minority group of citizens in our community," Torres wrote in the e-mail to The Gazette. "Centro Familia stands firm that we have done absolutely nothing wrong, and we have challenged anyone to show us where we have committed waste, fraud or abuse with our funds."

Board members of the daycare say the county is singling out "a nationally-recognized, minority-run non-profit that serves Montgomery County," according to a June letter to the Department of Health and Human Services by Torres and the daycare's president of the Board of Directors, David Anderson.

However, during fiscal year 2007 and 2008, the daycare's hazy documentation of invoices and accounting records of employee loans, printing costs, information technology and travel expenses made it "susceptible to abuse," according to a May memorandum written by Inspector General Thomas J. Dagley to Health and Human Services Director Uma Ahluwalia as well as to the County Council.

There is no indication the daycare has done anything criminally wrong, Lacefield said. Despite the potential misuse of funds, the county investigations, which are not finished, have determined that Centro Familia is still providing the services the county pays it for, such as training caregivers and preschool teachers and providing free, bilingual preschool to low-income families, he said.

The Inspector General Office and the Department of Health and Human Services have each begun reviewing about 70 invoices from the department to Centro Familia that were made "without verifying the validity and appropriateness of those payments," said a February inspector general letter to the County Council.

And the Health and Human Service's investigation has so far corroborated some of the inspector general's original concerns. The Department of Health and Human Services believes it overpaid Centro Familia in "several invoice categories" but has not yet received sufficient documentation from Centro Familia to explain where exactly the money was spent, Lacefield said.

As a result, the department suspended payments to Centro Familia over the summer but now continues to fund its full $488,000 a year, Anderson said.

The Department of Health and Human Services administers more than 500 contracts to private institutions for services across the county totaling about $80 million a year. The department closely supervises the programs the contractors agree to carry out, which leaves less time and man power to watch over the administrative aspects of each private contractor, Lacefield said.

"The notion is that when you partner with the private sector, you're off the hook on one end because you're not providing [services]," Lacefield said. "But you still need to do oversight."

Many nonprofits such as Centro Familia that support emerging, struggling communities are good at what they do but are less experienced than the county in bookkeeping, Lacefield said. The Department of Health and Human Services is in the process of tightening its supervision over administrative practices for private contractors, Lacefield said.

He added that the county wants to work with Centro Familia management "to help them get their house in order" and that the department will continue to pay Centro Familia for "the stuff that is justified and not pay the stuff that isn't justified."

In the meantime, Torres maintains the nonprofit can account for all of the missing funds.

"Centro Familia is confident the results of any investigation will end with the same result and we look forward to having the record and our reputation cleared," she wrote in her e-mail to The Gazette.